Keane, Strangeland (Island)

Wednesday 9 May 2012

KEANE: the band whose melodic pop makes Coldplay sound like Motorhead, whose posh-boy sheen makes Mumford & Sons seem like The View.

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alan morrison

Like a musical cockroach crawling over my hardened critical skin, they... will... not... die. And yet, for the fourth time in eight years, they've released an album I cannot hate.

I'll never be able to unreservedly praise Tim Rice-Oxley's piano- driven style of composition or his frequently over-earnest lyrics, but I'll always admire his mystical ability to arrange a succession of notes in such a manner that the tunes stick in my head and I have to physically fight the urge to surrender to their anthemic uplift.

Strangeland is mainstream to the core, but sits at the very peak of its genre. In a Beatles lineage, Keane are Paul McCartney spinning out effortless melody lines at a lonely keyboard in Abbey Road rather than John Lennon treating a recording session as emotional therapy. Watch How You Go prostrates itself before the throne of Queen, while Sovereign Light Cafe slays The Killers on the indie-pop battlefield. The sum of these parts, however, is uniquely Keane: got to give credit where it's due.

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Keane, Strangeland (Island)

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